Y Combinator Startup Podcast

Y Combinator

We help founders make something people want. The Y Combinator Podcast is where builders talk about building. From the earliest days of an idea to scaling a company that changes the world, YC partners and founders share real stories, lessons, and tactics from the frontlines.

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328 episodes
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Aug 3, 2018 · 51 min
#88 - Office Hours with Michael Seibel
Michael Seibel is a Partner and the CEO of YC. He cofounded Justin.tv, which was in the Winter 2007 batch and Socialcam, which was in the Winter 2012 batch. For this episode we took questions from the internet. If you have questions for a future office hours episode, just tweet them our way. Read the transcript here. The YC podcast is hosted by Craig Cannon. We're accepting applications from startups for the Winter 2019 funding cycle. Apply here. Questions 00:25 - Why is YC worth 7% of your company? 6:25 - Generating leverage when fundraising 12:07 - Youssef asks - How did you validate your product market fit? 15:00 - LC Carrier asks - How does YC feel about companies who don't want to raise VC after the program? 17:05 - Edmilson Rodrigues asks - Do companies need to be incorporated already to participate in YC? 18:50 - Alex Rodriguez asks - What do you look for in startups that haven't had good growth but continue to push through (e.g. AirBnB) that makes you accept them? 26:50 - Fedor Paretsky asks - Do you have techniques you encourage to make pitches sound more exciting? 35:05 - David Chen asks - How to find mentors and advisors? 39:25 - building EatNeat asks - What if anything are you specifically looking for in a startup that wants to be a part of the Startup School 2018? 40:00 - Ryan Carl Mercer asks - What's your preferred way organizing your time? 41:05 - John Rigler asks - Can intrapreneurship be effective? I recently returned to IBM, have a patent, and yet have only vague ideas about how to signal and organize other like-minded folks. Could this path sabotage my dreams? 41:55 - Horacio Chávez asks - How would you approach an investor who says "I won't invest unless you have a patent"? 42:35 - Yahya Elamrani asks - Why does it feel like entrepreneurs aren’t marriage material? Should an entrepreneur look for an entrepreneurial spouse? 44:15 - Yahya Elamrani asks - How intense do you really have to be to found a startup? 48:50 - Is there a particular stage of company that's best served by Startup School? 50:35 - How do you get the most out of Startup School?
Jul 27, 2018 · 43 min
#87 - Elad Gil
Elad Gil is an entrepreneur, operator, and investor. He cofounded Color Genomics and Mixer Labs. Worked at Google and Twitter. And has invested in companies including Airbnb, Coinbase, and Stripe. He just released the High Growth Handbook, which is a guide to scaling startups published by Stripe Press. It contains tactical advice on key issues for post product-market fit companies such as the role of the CEO, hiring executives, late stage fundraising, M&A, and other topics. It also includes interviews with people in tech, including Sam Altman, President of YC Group. You can find the High Growth Handbook on Amazon. The YC podcast is hosted by Craig Cannon. We're accepting applications from startups for the Winter 2019 funding cycle. Apply here. *** Topics 01:04 - Why should an entrepreneur read the High Growth Handbook? 5:35 - On Marc Andreessen's comment, "The companies that charge more tend to grow faster." 6:50 - Myths about startups 7:50 - Leon Coe asks - What types of businesses do you avoid investing in? 9:20 - Things to just say 'no' to 12:40 - Companies that may be too early 14:52 - On Naval Ravikant's comment, "The most successful class of people in silicon valley on a consistent basis are either the venture capitalists, or people who are very good at identifying companies that have just hit product/market fit. They have the background, expertise, and references that those companies really want to help them scale." 17:41 - On Claire Hughes Johnson's "Guide to Working with Claire" 19:40 - Masud Hossain asks - How did most of the companies you interviewed get their first 10 customers? 20:55 - Masud Hossain asks - Is content really king? 22:50 - Narayan Mallapur asks - Where do founders make the most mistakes? Is it on hiring? What steps should they take to avoid these pitfalls 24:55 - Brianne Kimmel asks - What are some lessons learned in highly regulated sectors? When should you hire a General Counsel? How do you prioritize public policy and lobbying efforts? 29:05 - Media cycles 30:55 - Marius Chawa asks - What are the top three things a startup "must" achieve before VC firms would line up to fund them? 34:45 - Taylor Caforio asks - My company is at our early MVP stage. What is he best way to find a balance between giving our earliest customers the 6 star treatment while also having swift and exponential growth in the back of our minds. 36:54 - Tanmay Khandelwal asks - When you are sprinting in growth stage, how do you predict engineers required and hire accordingly? 38:41 - TD Bryant II asks - When your organization is experiencing exponential growth, how do you choose which functions to outsource vs build/hire? 41:50 - Andrew Pikul asks - Who is your favorite Dragon Ball (Z/GT/Super) villain?
Jul 20, 2018 · 1 hr 24 min
#86 - Jocko Willink and Mike Sarraille
Jocko Willink and Mike Sarraille served together as Navy SEALs and now work together at Echelon Front, a company Jocko cofounded. We met up to talk about a new initiative they’ve set up called Overwatch. Overwatch is a talent acquisition firm that matches employers with veterans from special operations forces and combat aviation. You can learn more about Overwatch at EFOverwatch.com. They’re also hosting an event called the Muster in San Francisco on October 17th and 18th. You can sign up at ExtremeOwnership.com. If you’d like to hear more from Mike and Jocko, check out Jocko Podcast Episode 134. The YC podcast is hosted by Craig Cannon. We're accepting applications from startups for the Winter 2019 funding cycle. Apply here. *** Topics 01:04 - Intros 5:07 - Mike and Jocko on how they transitioned out 9:37 - How the military prepares people for the private sector 13:47 - What is Overwatch? 23:32 - Preconceptions about veterans 28:24 - Advice for companies looking to hire veterans 31:03 - Jocko's next book, The Dichotomy of Leadership 33:58 - Mike and Jocko's working relationship 45:20 - How to set up your team so everyone can contribute 55:02 - What Mike and Jocko are trying to improve about themselves 58:45 - Alex Badalyan asks - What are some military tactics startups could adopt to increase team effectiveness and throughput? 1:00:47 - Allen asks - From your experience as a SEAL and in the business world, do two or more co-founders/leaders have a higher success rate? What are your thoughts on a solo leader/founder with a strong team and culture? 1:06:56 - Armando Neves asks - I liked Jocko's episode on strategy and the way of the Samurai (The Book of Five Rings), how much of the warrior mindset is he implementing on a day to day basis? 1:11:17 - Ryan Carl Mercer asks - Favorite MRE and thank you for your service sir. 1:14:59 - Spencer Clark asks - Is culture more decided by micro or macro policies & interactions?
Jul 11, 2018 · 24 min
#85 - YC Partner AMA at the Female Founders Conference
Recorded live at our Female Founders Conference in New York, an AMA with Kat Manalac, Kirsty Nathoo, Adora Cheung, Holly Liu, Jessica Livingston, and Carolynn Levy. This panel was hosted by Sharon Pope, Head of Marketing Programs at YC. We’re also posting the other talks from the Female Founders Conference today. You can see all of them and read the transcripts at blog.ycombinator.com If you’d like to learn more about the Female Founders Conference, head over to femalefoundersconference.org
Jul 6, 2018 · 1 hr 14 min
#84 - João Batalha and Luís Batalha
João Batalha and Luís Batalha are cofounders of Fermat’s Library. Fermat’s Library is a platform for annotating papers. Each week they send out a paper annotated by their community. Some recent papers were Birds and Frogs by Freeman Dyson and Von Neumann's First Computer Program by Donald Knuth. They’ve also built a Chrome Extension call Librarian for the arXiv which allows you to get direct links to references, do BibTeX extraction and make comments on papers. You can find them at FermatsLibrary.com. Read the transcript on our blog. The YC podcast is hosted by Craig Cannon.
Jun 29, 2018 · 1 hr 14 min
#83 - Scott Aaronson
Scott Aaronson is the David J. Bruton Centennial Professor of Computer Science at The University of Texas at Austin, and director of its Quantum Information Center. Before teaching at UT, he taught Electrical Engineering and Computer Science at MIT. His research interests center around the capabilities and limits of quantum computers, and computational complexity theory more generally. If you’ve listened to our other episodes about quantum computers and are curious to learn more, check out Scott’s book Quantum Computing Since Democritus. And if you want to read Scott’s blog you can find that at scottaaronson.com/blog/. Read the transcript on our blog. The YC podcast is hosted by Craig Cannon.
Jun 27, 2018 · 43 min
#82 - Henrique Dubugras of Brex and Anu Hariharan
Henrique Dubugras is the cofounder of Brex, which provides corporate cards for startups. Anu Hariharan is a Partner at YC. Brex went through YC in the Winter 2017 batch and just closed their Series B, which was led by YC Continuity. In addition to discussing how the Brex team built out their service, Anu and Henrique also cover the specifics of what it takes to build a fintech startup in 2018. And Henrique shares advice for young founders, as he started his first company at 16. Read the transcript on our blog.
Jun 22, 2018 · 26 min
#81 - Announcing Work at a Startup
Jared Friedman is a partner at YC and before that cofounded Scribd (YC S06). Matt Long a software engineer at YC and before that cofounded Crocodoc (YC W10). Today we’re talking about a project Jared, Matt, and several other people at YC have been working on. It’s called Work at a Startup and it’s like a common application for engineers to apply to many YC companies simultaneously. We’re also hosting a Work at a Startup Expo on July 28th in Mountain View where you’ll be able to meet 35 rapidly growing YC companies. You can learn more and apply to attend at workatastartup.com/expo. The YC podcast is hosted by Craig Cannon.
Jun 13, 2018 · 1 hr 1 min
#80 - Office Hours with Adora Cheung
Adora Cheung is a partner at YC and she also cofounded Homejoy, which went through YC in the Summer 2010 batch. For this episode we took questions from the internet. If you have questions for a future office hours episode, just tweet them our way. Questions 0:41 - topherPedersen asks - How many users did you have when you applied to YC? Also, how much revenue had you generated? 2:55 - Hatlii asks - How do you keep going if you can’t raise any money? 4:54 - Alejandro Ruperti asks - When/how do you decide to walk away from something you started? 10:41 - Chris Melnick-MacDonald asks - What advice and lessons did you learn in entering the #Canadian market? 13:16 - Yahya Elamrani asks - Do I have to work on culture in the very early stage? 15:39 - Adam Sanders asks - What was the best decision you made for Homejoy? 16:53 - Ujjawal Chauhan asks - Would love to know what’s the one thing she’d do differently in hindsight if she were to start over again? 20:35 - Nikita Butakov asks - What are some unique data science / machine learning challenges faced by Homejoy? 22:07 - Alejandro Ruperti asks - From @tferriss : how has a failure or apparent failure set you up for a later success? 32:37 - Siamak Freydoonnejad asks - What are the best practices when doing a cold reach out to an investor? 33:14 - 😎rliesaurus @ ✈️ 🇪🇺asks - Is Uber for X still a thing people would invest in, in the US? 36:21 - Fedor Paretsky asks - How have YC's views on cryptocurrency/blockchain-related startups changed since Coinbase? 42:56 - Manav asks - What type of companies is YC seeing more of this time around? 46:45 - Yahya Elamrani - What are the best marketing strategies for year one for a b2c startup? 53:55 - Yahya Elamrani asks - What would you say to a founder from a third world country where there is a big lack in tech talents (and you can't compete with big corps due to lack of resources) in term of hiring? 55:50 - Aspiring Angel asks - What’s the best way for investors interested in startup seed/angel funding get started? How does location affect the process?
May 31, 2018 · 48 min
#79 - Liz Wessel
Liz Wessel is the cofounder and CEO of WayUp. WayUp is a job and internship platform for college students and recent graduates. They were part of the Winter 2015 YC batch. Read the transcript here. The YC podcast is hosted by Craig Cannon.
May 25, 2018 · 1 hr 19 min
#78 - Simon Benjamin
Simon Benjamin is a Professor of Quantum Technologies at Oxford. He is also the Principle Investigator for Oxford’s project on Quantum Optimisation and Machine Learning. This episode is more technical than last week’s episode with John Preskill. We start by covering some fundamentals then go into different approaches for constructing and scaling a quantum computer. Read the transcript here. The YC podcast is hosted by Craig Cannon.
May 16, 2018 · 1 hr 33 min
#77 - John Preskill
John Preskill is a theoretical physicist and the Richard P. Feynman Professor of Theoretical Physics at Caltech. He once won a bet with Steven Hawking, which as he writes made him “briefly almost famous.” John and Kip Thorne bet that singularities could exist outside of black holes and after six years Hawking conceded that they were possible in very special, “nongeneric” conditions. In this episode we cover what John’s been focusing on for years: quantum information, quantum computing, and quantum error correction. Read the transcript here. The YC podcast is hosted by Craig Cannon.
May 9, 2018 · 41 min
#76 - Carola Schönlieb
Carola Schönlieb is an applied mathematician at the University of Cambridge. She’s also a Turing Fellow at the Alan Turing Institute and the head of the Image Analysis group at Cambridge’s Department of Applied Mathematics and Theoretical Physics. In this episode we cover mathematical approaches to image processing. The YC podcast is hosted by Craig Cannon.
May 4, 2018 · 1 hr 3 min
#75 - Sean Mitchell
Sean Mitchell is the cofounder and CEO of Rezi. REZI helps landlords find high quality, long-term tenants in 48 hours. They were part of the Winter 2017 batch. The YC podcast is hosted by Craig Cannon.
May 2, 2018 · 50 min
#74 - Linda Xie and Avichal Garg
Linda Xie is the cofounder of Scalar Capital, a cryptoasset fund. Before that she was a Product Manager at Coinbase (YC S12). Avichal Garg is a Managing Partner at Electric Capital, a value fund for digital assets. He’s also an Expert at YC. Prior to that he was the Director of Product Management at Facebook. The YC podcast is hosted by Craig Cannon.
Apr 27, 2018 · 56 min
#73 - Patrick Moberg and Holly Liu
Patrick Moberg is the cofounder of Playdots, which is a mobile game studio in New York. They make Dots, Two Dots, and Dots and Co. Holly Liu is is a Visiting Partner at YC. Before that she cofounded the gaming company Kabam. The YC podcast is hosted by Craig Cannon.
Apr 25, 2018 · 46 min
#72 - Miles Brundage and Tim Hwang
Miles Brundage is an AI Policy Research Fellow with the Strategic AI Research Center at the Future of Humanity Institute. He is also a PhD candidate in Human and Social Dimensions of Science and Technology at Arizona State University. Miles recently co-authored The Malicious Use of Artificial Intelligence: Forecasting, Prevention, and Mitigation. Tim Hwang is the Director of the Harvard-MIT Ethics and Governance of AI Initiative. He is also a Visiting Associate at the Oxford Internet Institute and a Fellow at the Knight-Stanford Project on Democracy and the Internet. This is Tim's second time on the podcast; he was also on episode 11. The YC podcast is hosted by Craig Cannon.
Apr 20, 2018 · 45 min
#71 - Claire McDonnell and Jennifer Kim on Building an Inclusive Company Culture
Claire McDonnell is cofounder and COO of True Link Financial (YC S13). True Link is a financial services firm that offers money management, investment, and insurance products, primarily for retirees. Jennifer Kim is currently advising startups. Prior to that she was the Head of Employee Experience and Development at Lever. Lever makes recruiting software and they were part of the Summer 2012 batch. Kat Manalac is a partner here at YC.
Apr 18, 2018 · 53 min
#70 - CoinList Cofounder Andy Bromberg and Ramon Recuero
Andy Bromberg is the cofounder and CEO of CoinList. Coinlist provides financial infrastructure for token creators and investors. Ramon Recuero is an engineer at YC. He's the author of the Decentralized Future Series, which you can read here. If you'd like to listen to more podcasts about crypto, here are episodes with Juan Benet (IPFS) and Dalton Caldwell (YC) and Olaf Carlson-Wee (Polychain Capital) and Aaron Harris (YC). The YC podcast is hosted by Craig Cannon.
Apr 13, 2018 · 28 min
#69 - Anne Wojcicki of 23andMe and Sam Altman
Anne Wojcicki is the cofounder and CEO of 23andMe, which provides direct-to-consumer genetic testing. Sam Altman is the president of YC Group. He interviewed Anne for a series called How To Build The Future, which you can check out on our YouTube channel.